Plac Bankowy, Warsaw

Plac Bankowy is a historic square in Warsaw. It lies between Aleja Solidarności and the approaches of Senatorska and Elektoralna Streets. Created in eighteen twenty-five, it replaced the courtyard of the Ogiński Palace with grand public buildings designed by Antonio Corazzi.

The square takes its name from the banking complex established here. The surviving monumental façades along the western side were rebuilt after the war. Across the open space, the Great Synagogue once stood from eighteen seventy-eight; Nazi occupiers destroyed it after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Błękitny Wieżowiec now occupies that former synagogue site. Notice the Juliusz Słowacki monument: it was unveiled in two thousand one near the site of the removed Feliks Dzierżyński statue, and Słowacki had worked in the Revenue and Treasury Commission Palace during the years eighteen twenty-nine to eighteen thirty-one. In November nineteen eighty-nine, Dzierżyński’s monument was torn down and the square regained its older name, marking the end of communist rule in Poland.